Up on the Rooftop
by Indoctrinated
Summary: Rose doubted that he would ever run out things to amaze her with, to make her smirk or grin or laugh. He was that kind of man. TenRose.


A/N: Well, this chapter would have been slightly longer had I not scared myself off at the last second when it came to writing the last bit of this chapter; I am by no means an experienced 'romance' writer. I dabbled a bit Transcendence and in Darkfall, but neither of those scenes was longer than a paragraph or two…so that explains my hesitance to post this. For awhile I considered not posting it at all, just keeping it safe in my little file of stories waiting to be finished or posted, but tonight its siren song was irresistible. I've been in love with the idea for this fic for several months now, hope you guys will like it too.

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"You're not going to believe this."

Rose Tyler had heard that exact sentence come from the man that stood in her doorway many times, and she had yet to be disappointed by what he had discovered to show her. She doubted that he would ever run out things to amaze her with, to make her smirk or grin or laugh; he was that kind of man. He held out a hand, fingers spread in preparation to intertwine themselves with hers and flashed an inviting smile. "Come with me. This is something you _have_ to see!"

Rose remained still, having not yet given an answer – though not out of hesitation. What he wanted to show her would undoubtedly be the most spectacular thing she'd ever seen, a sight that had only been viewed by precious few sets of human eyes. No, her pause was not caused by uncertainty, but by memory. She took a moment, a brief schism in time, to memorize everything around her; the way his hair stuck out in every conceivable direction and had to defy several laws of physics, the sheer magnetism of his infectious smile, how the light from the warm glow of a street lamp fell over his angular features, the hazy mist formed by his crystallizing breath, and - most importantly - the way the warm depths of his brown eyes pulled her in and in and in until she felt like she might drown, and yet at the same time felt safer than she could ever imagine.

Suddenly, her lips spilt in a wide grin, tongue catching between her teeth and took the offered hand, saying, "I've no doubt, show me."

He returned the smile with a bursting enthusiasm and pulled her into the night, breath billowing in great clouds as they sprinted along the sidewalk. He swung a sharp turn down an alleyway that ran alongside the Powell Estate. No light from the street brought light to these shadows, but she trusted the Doctor would not let her stray too far lest she trip. After a few minutes more of running, lungs burning from the freezing air inhaled through gaping mouths and chests heaving, they skidded to a halt in front of a rusting fire escape. The ladder that would allow their ascension hung several feet above their heads, preventing the upward climb the Doctor seemed to suggest they were going to take. Her lips had just begun to form a question when he released her hand and moved to stand directly under the ladder.

Without a word or other comment, he smoothly leapt several feet in the air – higher than most humans could ever hope to achieve, basketball players being one possible exception – and snagged the bottom rung of the ladder. A swift shift of his weight and a light jerk dislodged the ladder. The Doctor jumped back from it as it hit the ground with a clanging echo. He turned to her and grinned. "Come on then. Up we go."

For a moment she just stood there, thinking. Sometimes it was so easy to forget he wasn't human. And then he'd do something like that, leap an impossible height into the air, maybe a casual comment or an odd look, and she'd remember that he's a Time Lord, a Gallifreyan, not a human.

He smiled uneasily at her, unsure of why she hesitated. But then she grinned and swung one foot up on the first rung, grasping one several feet higher with another hand. As soon as she was a few rungs up, he swung onto the ladder himself, ready to support her legs or steady a foot in case it slipped on an ice-coated metal tread. In a few more moments they were both standing on the first landing of the fire escape, breath crystallizing in the icy winter air. Then they grinned at one another, laughing, and began the ascent again, climbing through the remaining three landings as sure footed as mountain goats.

Once she stood on the rooftop, Rose suddenly realized how cold the night was. Down below in the alleyway the buildings had protected them from all but a small breeze, but up here was no such windbreak. The wind raced around her, icy teeth biting through her cotton sweater and nipping at her flesh. A knit cap kept her head and ears warm, and pair of snug boots protected her feet, but the rest of her was chilled to the bone. She wrapped her arms around herself, dancing lightly from toe to toe to raise her body heat as she waited for the Doctor. He appeared only a moment after, the same manic grin plastered on his face. Immediately he noticed her shivering and, without a second thought, shrugged out of his trenchcoat and approached her, holding it open. "Turn around," he told her softly, his voice barely rising above the blustering call of the nighttime wind.

She complied, allowing him to tuck the coat around her and slid her arms in. She quickly reached around to do up a few buttons, but his hands caught her arms just below the elbow, holding her still. His breath panted against her neck and jaw – achingly hot and frigidly cold at the same time – as he reached around her with his hands. Deft fingers secured several buttons in the holes. Her eyes shuttered closed against her own will, surrendering to a world of touch, smell, and sensation instead.

A double heartbeat thrummed against her back, a steady, slow thump that beat a familiar, reassuring pattern. The heat of his body pressed against the contours of her back stirred her blood, heating it to a boiling temperature despite the icy winter night. His hands were a heavy and comfortable weight against her waist, and his hot, needy breath against her neck as he worked tensed every muscle in her body until she though she might explode. His hair, thick and soft, tickled her cheek as he bent his head over her shoulder to complete the task, teasing her with the thought of clenching a fistful of it in her hand as she gasped his name breathlessly. She fought off the temptation, returning to the world of sight. Just as she did so, she noticed that his movements had stilled, and with one hand holding her steady by each hip, he held her against his own body.

He whispered in her ear just as her eyes opened again, "Tired already? I was just getting started for tonight."

She smiled lazily, breaking his grip on her waist to turn and face him. She inspected his handy work, making sure all the buttons were paired to the proper holes. "I'm never too tired to see something you have to show me." She looked around at the bare rooftop, wonder what the surprise was. "So…?" She asked expectantly.

He just pointed a finger to the heavens, a confident flash in his eyes. She obediently looked up, although her eyes found nothing but the empty, starry sky of a cloudless winter night. She glanced back at him, skeptical. He just pointed more vigorously with the same finger, upwards, no different than before. She complied, but there was still nothing.

Exasperated, she said, "Doctor, there's nothing there. What exactly am I supposed to be seeing?"

He clapped his hands together, rubbing them excitedly. "You're right!" he crowed, "there is nothing there. Absolutely nothing. Well done, Rose. Just a plain ole starry sky and a sliver of the moon…" He grinned slyly. "But only to your eyes."

She grinned back, just as slyly. "Ah, I see." She thought about what she had said for a second. "Well, no, I _don't_ see, that's kind of the point. What I mean is – oh, you know what I mean, you git."

He laughed. "I know exactly what you mean."  
She shrugged, saying, "Well how am I supposed to see something that I _can't_ see?"

"Your eyes can't see it, not the right shape, not the right receptors, not the right size. Basically, human eyes just weren't built from this kind of thing. I, however, due to my superior Time Lord genes that were built specifically for travel in time and space, can see this particular sight with crystal clear vision."

She stared at him blankly.

He hurried on, adding, "I'm going to give you my vision for a short while, just a few minutes. You'll be able to see what no other human will ever see in all of time, Rose. No matter how much humans evolve, they'll never develop the right eye genes to see something like this." Her stare still continued to penetrate him. He smiled nervously. "So, ready to make history?"

The question seemed to snap her out of whatever sort of trance she was in, because she replied, "You're going to give your vision to me so that I can see…something…in the sky. Something that no human can see but Time Lords can?"

"Exactly! Ready?"

"As I'll ever be," she sighed.

He nodded and turned her around again, pressing himself against her back as his hands slid upwards, through her hair to touch her temples. His head tipped forward until it rested against the back of hers. After a few seconds, a thin stream of golden light spilled from his eyes, bleeding into her hair and crawling its way across to her face. The stream flowed into her eyes, through her tear ducts. Threads of gold wove themselves into her iris and pupil, granting her the vision of a Time Lord.

Behind her, the Doctor trembled in an instinctual fear, but Rose was too awed by the sight in the sky to notice anything else happening around her.

The thing that the Doctor could see and no one else could on the entire Earth nearly drove Rose to tears at the sight of it. A great celestial light rained down from the heavens, the dancing colors in every possible spectrum of the rainbow and even more that were new to her eyes wove abstract patterns high in the air. Ribbons of light slashed through the empty night sky, filling it with an ethereal glow that seemed to suggest only something far bigger was hidden above, and what her eyes lay on was only a small part of it. The intensity of the light made her squint, and she was sure that if humans _had _been able to see such sights they would have been blinded upon catching even a glimpse of something as spectacular as this.

"My God," she gasped, unable to find something that suited the sight before her better. She was unable to form conscious thoughts in front of something as beautiful as this, something so pure and clean and otherworldly. "I don't believe this…"

From somewhere faraway, she heard the Doctor's voice. "It's the remnants of a supernova from billions of miles away. Humans can't see this, not with their eyes or their telescopes, but this is what's left along with what humans _can_ see when a star explodes. My people called it the soul of a star because of its luminous and heavenly appearance. Nothing else in the entire universe looks like the soul of a star. Other cultures know of the souls of stars, but Time Lords are the only ones that can actually _see_ them. This soul has drifted for thousands of years across galaxies; it's unlikely another one will pass over the Earth in your lifetime…" He went on, but the rest of his words faded into the background as a beam of light slashed across the rooftop, and for a split second, Rose felt everything the star had been through. The star was very old when it died, billions of years older than the Solar system's sun. It had given life to three planets for millions of years before it was caught up in a war, a horrible conflict that savaged everything in its path. Each of the three orbiting planets was destroyed before the star was drained of energy until it exploded, creating a massive supernova. The soul had drifted for many more millions of years, but no one had been able to see it until now. All the Time Lords were dead, save for the Doctor. Rose heard what the soul had to tell her, all of its history in a scant few seconds, and then the light began to fade out. In mere moments it was gone, and she realized regretfully that she could no longer look upon things with the eyes of a Time Lord. She was fully human again.

In the same instant, she became acutely aware of the Doctor's proximity, specifically the desperate way his hands clutched at her, grasping firmly just above her elbows. His face was buried against her shoulder as his entire body shuddered. She tried to turn around to face him but his arms were firmly locked. He murmured to himself - a soft, smooth sound - but she found herself unable to understand what he was saying.

Now, urgency lending her strength, she ripped herself from the Doctor's grasp. His mumbling became more stressed, more urgent. She spun, calling his name. When he didn't answer with a perky reply and a bright grin, just stood there, slightly stooped and still murmuring heatedly, her worry increased tenfold. Her hands swept his face up, and as they came in contact with his skin she noticed the sweat beading and streaming down his face. Eyes clenched tightly shut and brow furrowed, he murmured even more violently than before. A vein throbbed sickeningly in his temple, his racing double heartbeat frighteningly visible. She shook him, called his name, touched a hand to his feverish brow, tried to pry his eyes open, tried to calm him with soothing words. Nothing worked. Suddenly, desperate and confused, she kissed him, hoping it might shock him out of his trance.

For the first few seconds he continued to speak against the press of her lips, the impossibly mellifluous words that rolled from his mouth collected in hers instead. Then he froze – but only for a moment. The next he was taking her into his arms, pressing her against every inch of him with a frightening urgency. It wasn't slow or soft or gentle like it is the books and the movies. It wasn't calm and loving, it wasn't tender or sweet. But it was unlike anything Rose had ever known. It was hot and needy, making her want to melt in all the right places and returned her blood to its previous boiling temperature. It was desperate and feverish and demanding all at once. Her fingers raked through his hair as she finally gave into that familiar temptation, gasping his name against his mouth. "Doctor."

He gasped her name in reply, just as breathlessly, "Rose."

Eyes still closed, she sensed his face hover near hers for just a moment before it moved away. A second later she felt a warm flush against her neck, and a then a scraping sensation at the hollow where her shoulder joined the rest of her body as the Doctor pressed an open-mouthed kiss to her skin. Her entire body bowed against his, an instinctive tremble shaking her from head to toe as she fully leaned against him. An appreciative grunt escaped his throat as he worked his way back up her neck, along the curve of her jaw, but withheld a final kiss to her lips. His hands released her waist and flitted up to touch her face, the sensitive pads of his fingers brushing over her lips, her eyes, outlining the curves of her cheek and jaw bones, tracing the curves of her ears and the contours of her nose. Her eyes snapped open. It was then she realized that his eyes were still shut, and his head was held straight forward so that – had his eyes been open – they would have been looking at something directly over her head.

She clung to him, worry creeping into the back of her mind again. "Doctor…what's wrong?"

His eyes finally opened, slowly, one sliver at a time. Once fully opened, Rose discovered that something was horribly, disturbingly wrong. His eyes were a solid milky white. The iris and pupil had completely disappeared, leaving behind only the pure whites of his eyes. Her breath inhaled sharply as he replied cautiously, "I'm blind."

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TBC… 


End file.
